The design of printed material, i.e., the page layout, has historically been closely tied to the available page production technology. As publishing technology has evolved from early metal type technology to digitally scaled type technology, electronic publishing tools have likewise evolved. Early electronic publishing tools, such as TROFF by Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., were designed to accommodate a page model of metal type which was laid out, from beginning to end, in a single process. These early publishing tools, required the user to embed descriptions of the page layout in the document itself. The embedded descriptions were later interpreted by a formatting program in a batch-oriented manner. That is, the layout process occurred without human interaction.
More recent interactive programs such as INTERLEAF by Interleaf Publishing, Inc., Cambridge, Mass., allow the user to see the page layout in real time as it is being edited. Such programs are particularly suited for arranging the page layout of running text, and include facilities for breaking up lines, columns and pages of text. The parameters available to the user to design the page layout typically control word hyphenation, line length, formatting of page headers, footers and margins, formatting of text into columns, and flow of text around graphics. Further, once a page layout is defined by the user, these programs allow a multipage document to be created with a consistent look throughout all pages. Although such publishing tools are appropriate for formatting running text, they are less well-suited for applications in which a number of graphical and text elements must relate to each other in complex ways. For this reason, page layout for ads and many other graphically oriented documents were still done by a graphic designer using hand paste-ups.
Still more recently, graphics-oriented publishing tools such as PAGE MAKER by Aldus, Corp. Seattle, Wash., and COREL DRAW by Corel System, Corp., Ottawa, Canada have combined interactive text formatting with graphics editing commands to give the user the ability to interactively place individual text or graphical objects anywhere on a page to effect an electronic paste-up of a page. With these newer tools, the designer is given much creative freedom, and interactively makes numerous changes to the page layout, typically on a trial and error basis, until the desired page layout is achieved. These tools are most suited for one-of-a-kind page layouts in which the choice of type and positioning of graphics and lettering is critical.
In documents such as greeting cards, business stationery, letterhead, business cards, resumes, restaurant menus, wedding invitations, and printed advertisements, the text and graphic elements are arranged in complex relationships. Unfortunately, none of the above-described publishing tools is capable of capturing these complex relationships. The text oriented publishing tools are too structured to achieve the desired document formats while the graphics-oriented publishing tools, require the designer to execute countless revisions of the page layout before achieving the desired format.
There exists a need for an electronic publishing tool which simplifies the design of documents which contain both text and graphic elements and which is capable of capturing the complex relationship between these elements.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system which automates the page layout of graphic and text elements in a printed document.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system which stores a plurality of page specifications, each page specification comprising a plurality of constraints describing the layout of user-definable text and graphic elements.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a system which allows the user to select a page specification, define text and graphic elements, and then automatically generate a page layout in accordance with the page specification through selective manipulation of the text and graphic elements.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system which automates the page layout process, frees the designer from executing numerous revisions of the page layout to reach the desired format.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a method by which text and graphic elements in a page layout are automatically arranged in accordance with a plurality of constraints of a selected page specification.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a method for automating the layout of text and graphic elements on a page which frees the designer from executing numerous revisions of the page layout until the desired format is achieved.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system that allows the user to select a piece of artwork from a database of artwork and to select a message text from a database of stored message texts or use text composed at the time of greeting card production, and then automatically generate a greeting card layout in accordance with the artwork specification through selective manipulation or the text and artwork.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system which stores a plurality of artwork specifications, each artwork specification comprising information describing a piece of artwork and a plurality of constraints describing the layout of text elements in relation to the piece of artwork.